February 8 - Praising the White House Wife-Beater Until the Truth Emerges; Can Democrats Use the Threat of a Government Shutdown Without Repeating Recent Mistakes?; A Leading Expert on Intelligence Oversight Assesses the Damage Nunes is Doing

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Part 1	We begin with the resignation of Rob Porter, the rising star in the White House who is dating Hope Hicks the young woman who spends more time with Donald Trump than any other aide. Although his history of spousal abuse was known, it was not acted upon until a picture of the first battered wife appeared, followed by testimony from the second who claimed he called her an “F-ing bitch” on their honeymoon, then a third woman, an ex-girlfriend working in the Trump Administration, came forward recently and told the White House counsel Porter had abused her as well as his ex-wives. Dahlia Lithwick, a senior editor and legal correspondent for Slate where she has an article “Rob Porter’s History of Domestic Abuse Wasn’t a Secret. It’s Just That No One Cared”, joins us. We will discuss how Porter’s boss General Kelly, after defending Porter and praising him effusively, has not just been exposed as a hardline ideologue and hardly the adult in the room everyone was hoping for, but the military disciplinarian is showing signs he is not diminishing the chaos at the White House but instead is adding to the incompetence.
Part 2	Then, after Nancy Pelosi’s 8 hour-long defense of the “Dreamers” before the House yesterday, we assess what strategies the House Minority can employ against a majority of Republicans who are anti-immigrant and a White House that is stirring up xenophobic and nativist anger, we will speak with Margaret Hu a Professor of Law at Washington and Lee School of Law. She served as special policy counsel in the Office of Special Counsel for Immigration at the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department and we will discuss how Democrats can leverage the threat of a government shutdown to achieve their goals without repeating the mistakes of the recent government shutdown.
Part 3	Then finally we speak to one of the nation’s leading experts on intelligence organizations, Loch Johnson, the author of a timely new book “Spy Watching: Intelligence Accountability in the United States”. He was staff director of the Senate Committee on Intelligence and was at the forefront of the reforms that brought about the House and Senate Intelligence oversight committees and we discuss how Trump’s stooge Devin Nunes, the Chair of the House intelligence Committee, is single-handedly wrecking his committee and destroying the bi-partisanship that is essential in protecting our national security.